


Blame

by TFLatte



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Gen, Minor Plot Spoilers, also i did not miss titling things AT ALL, anyway i haven't ficced in 10 years and i'm terrified lol shout out to this movie for motivating me, not shippy bc moana's 16 and that would be gross, why do things have to have names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 17:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8721661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TFLatte/pseuds/TFLatte
Summary: Flying leaves Maui with a lot of time to think.





	

Maui doesn’t look back when he leaves the boat behind. He flies until his anger cools enough to settle into a pattern as familiar as breathing, even after a thousand years, wings beating slow and powerful to keep him aloft for as long as he needs, and he doesn’t think about burns and cracks and fire.

He definitely doesn’t think about mortals with cracking voices, either.

(Mini-Maui is going to sulk for a month after this. Maui’s never understood why the little guy is like this, he’s supposed to be Maui himself but he’s always arguing and getting attached.)

It doesn’t matter. He has his hook and he’s not fighting any more lava monsters anytime soon – he can go back to being Maui, Hero of Man. Apparently he has a few centuries of bad press to make up for, fine, he’s got some ideas to work around that. And Moana can go back to that little village of hers and do whatever mortals do all day.

Motonui, he remembers, she called it Motonui. And on the heels of that thought comes the memory of one of their conversations, and of the spark in her eyes when she told him about her village. He’d been sort of impressed at the idea that this sheltered island kid had found her way across the ocean all on sheer determination, even if it had only gotten her as far as his pile of rocks. He doesn’t like the twinge in his gut that follows the memory.

It doesn’t _matter_. The kid will go home and anyway, she’s not his problem, except that she is the problem. The one that almost broke his hook.

The angry twist of his gut isn’t actually better than the guilty one.

Okay, yes, he screwed up, but he paid for it already, didn’t he? When he first saw the boat just sitting on the beach, like a personal gift from the gods, he thought a thousand years without a soul for company had finally got to him until he felt the wood in his hand. Ten centuries of being marooned should have been enough for anyone. He doesn’t have to lose the most important thing in his life to make up for a mistake. But no, the boat had been real, and so had the angry little mortal who just refused to let it go, demanded he go back to Te Fiti with her – _and_ teach her everything about how to sail to boot, who knew humans could forget everything he taught them the first time – and somehow fight the monster that had nearly finished him the first time so he could put back the Heart.

And the thing was, he’d actually started to think they could do it, that between them they could fix things, and somewhere it had become “they” and not “me” and he didn’t know when.

Maybe it was around when he remembered how much fun mortals were.

Moana will be fine. She’ll sail herself home and they’ll probably all talk about how cool it was that she traveled all the way to Te Fiti before coming back-

He nearly drops into the ocean when the thought hits him.

She still has the Heart.

No. No, she wouldn’t. Would she?

(Of course she would. Even after only a few weeks knowing her, he is absolutely certain of one thing: Moana is exactly the kind of person to do everything he would never believe.)

It would be suicide, she had him to protect her the first time and they still almost died. Taking on Te Ka is demigod work and he’s getting farther away every minute. It’s not something for mortals, who die like breathing even without bringing godlike monsters into the mix, to try. He can name a dozen ways for her to die in the attempt without even thinking – crushed, burned, worse he doesn’t want to put words to.

He can also remember that same conversation, when she mentioned the blight and her voice faded to nothing before she smiled a little too big and changed the subject. Even if she’d been subtle, Maui knows homesickness when he sees it.

Moana is going to try to get past Te Ka without him and she is never going to make it. Maui mutters a curse seven hundred years out of date.

He tells himself it’s not on him what she decides to do, and that justification sounds pathetic even in his own mind. This is his own stupid fault to begin with, and he just left Moana – next chief of her village, duty-bound to protect her people - to die trying to fix it. It couldn’t be more on him if he’d flown off as soon as the first rock flew.

Moana’s stubborn, bossy, proud, the reason he got off the island, and his first real friend in a long, long- _long_ time. Maui owes her a lot better than he gave her, and he knows it. He banks and dips low enough to the waves to mutter “You’d better look out for her till I catch up, got it?” If the ocean hears him, it doesn’t answer, but all he can do about that is beat his wings faster and rise to catch a better wind.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I've been listening to the Moana soundtrack on loop for over a week and also I saw the movie last week and I am kind of in love. And since I have a long commute home, I sort of ended up writing most of this fic(or at least, the best bits) in my head while in the car. I haven't written real fic in so long, it's weird to think I was just a kid then!
> 
> Anyway, given that the category has barely hit double digits(I've been watching) I figured, maybe it's not a bad idea to contribute this thing. I...would like to not wait 10 years before writing another thing, so. I'm open to suggestions? On what people would like to read and also how to be better in general. Gently though, please. I do know I have a lot of room for improvement and I am but a small and fragile semi-creative soul.


End file.
